


Without A Body

by Curator_of_Curiosity



Series: There's Only One God, Ma'am... [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1940s, Anglican Peggy Carter, Canon Compliant, Catholic Steve Rogers, Church of England, Episcopalian Bucky Barnes, F/M, Gen, Religious Content, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 16:35:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator_of_Curiosity/pseuds/Curator_of_Curiosity
Summary: Captain America was Protestant, but Steve Rogers was Catholic.





	Without A Body

Captain America was Protestant, but Steve Rogers was Catholic.

  
Sarah Rogers raised her son Catholic. He was baptized in a Catholic church. He wore his dad’s St. George medal that the army had sent back with his things after he died in the Great War. He had his first communion when he was about seven and got confirmed when he was twelve. She taught him his catechism and taught him to pray the rosary. On Fridays, they fasted from meat.  
Not that it mattered. Sarah Rogers could rarely afford to buy meat, actually.  
It got him into trouble more than once—the Irish Catholic part, not the meat. Being an immigrant’s son was bad enough, but being Catholic was worse. People didn’t like Catholics very much and plenty of people still saw the Irish as violent, useless drunks.  
It meant Steve knew what it felt like for people to hate you just because of what your last name was, where your family came from, how you chose to worship.  
It meant Steve judged people more by actions than by where they were from.  
It meant Steve fought to protect people.

  
Steve always figured Bucky’s family was better off than his. He didn’t learn they weren’t Catholic for a long while, though. He didn’t realize it until Bucky’s mom had made some comment about America being for Americans.  
“Not for the Jews,” she’d said. “And not for the Catholics—their loyalties are too divided. It’s for Americans, plain and simple.”  
Bucky’s whole face had gone white. The tips of Steve’s ears had gone red.  
Steve couldn’t remember what his response was, but he remembered it created quite a stir. He remembered Mr. and Mrs. Barnes asking him to go back to wherever it was he was from.

  
Weeks later, sitting on the curb outside his tenement, Bucky again. He was holding a bright red penny apple.  
“You got something to say?” said Steve.  
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Bucky sat down on the curb next to him.  
Steve didn’t say anything.  
“I should’ve told you the sort of person my mom was,” Bucky went on. He pulled out a penknife and started carving the apple in half. “She doesn’t want me hanging out with you anymore.”  
“Then why’re you here?” Steve asked.  
“Because my mom’s wrong.” Bucky handed Steve half of the apple.  
Steve took the apple half. “Maybe someday she’ll see that.”  
Bucky nodded. “Sure hope so.”  
Nothing Bucky’s mom would say would keep them apart.

  
Peggy wasn’t Catholic either. Her family had been Anglican since the reign of Edward VI, she told him, and she wasn’t about to convert, no matter how much she loved Steve. No matter how much they talked about settling down together after the war.  
“A ‘mixed’ marriage,” Steve said, using his mother’s term. What would she say if she were still alive, he wondered.  
“Think of the children,” Peggy would tease him.  
And they did think of the children—they figured it would be years, if it happened at all, but they thought of it. In their minds, there were three of them—Sarah, Michael, and James. They’d raise them in America and they’d summer in England. Peggy’s folks had a house in the country. The fresh air would do them all good.  
They never did decide whether to bring them up Anglican or Catholic.

  
When Steve became Captain America, they gave him Protestant dog tags.  
Steve started to explain, “But I’m not—”  
“Higher-ups think Catholicism is bad for publicity,” explained Colonel Phillips. “People want to think their Captain America is an honest-to-God Protestant boy.”  
“What kind of Protestant?” Bucky asked.  
“As far as they’re concerned, Captain Rogers can take his pick,” said Phillips.

  
But it got Steve worried. Worried about lying to so many people. Worried about what would happen to him after he died, especially if he died during the war. If he lived long enough to have the Last Rites, would they give him that? Would they let him have a Catholic funeral? Would they at least give him that?  
He didn’t say anything about it to anyone except Bucky and Peggy. They were sitting in the graveyard of a bombed-out church in London. Bucky sat on a gravestone. Peggy sat leaning next to one.  
“Am I crazy for worrying about this?” Steve asked.  
Bucky and Peggy shook their heads.  
“Absolutely not,” added Peggy. Steve noticed her face was still smeared with ash and mud from their last mission.  
“I don’t know why I brought it up,” said Steve. “I guess what I’m asking is, if anything happens to me…”  
Bucky looked shocked. “Steve—”  
“We all know it could happen, Buck.” Steve knew exactly what Bucky wanted to say, but he also knew there was only so much Bucky would be able to protect him from. He said as much.  
They all hoped it wouldn’t come down to it, but Peggy and Bucky promised that whatever happened to Captain America, Steve Rogers—the little Irish kid from Brooklyn who didn’t listen when the world said to quit fighting—would get a Catholic funeral.  
But that promise fell apart when Steve went into the ice.  
You can’t have a Catholic funeral without a body.

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series I've been working on-and-off on about religion in the MCU, but I haven't decided on a concrete name for the series yet, so it isn't listed as such.


End file.
